All IPE articles in October 2003 (Magazine)
View all stories from this issue.
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Features
Why we all will be speaking IAS 19 soon
With apologies to yet another variation on those immortal words from Star Trek, it’s just possible that pension accounting treatment in Europe might become the trend-setter for the world, surpassing even the US Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) that started it all almost 20 years ago. In December 1985, the ...
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Features
Russian system creaks into action
Russia’s pension reform has been slow in coming. For the past eight years, a three-pillar system has gradually been taking shape, and over the past two years, developments to the second pillar appear to have now been finalised. Back in January, President Putin signed the law to allow private asset ...
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Features
Jury is out on regulators' actions
Whether you are reading a newspaper on the London underground or in a Milan coffee shop, the headlines may be different, but the translation is the same. “Pensions in crisis”… “Pension industry time bomb”…. Equities markets have been in relative free fall since the turn of the new millennium as ...
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Features
Latvia and Estonia streak ahead
Lithuania’s private pensions system differs in some technical respects from its Latvian and Estonian counterparts, including the completely voluntary nature of the second pillar and its use of a system of individualised accounts. Its compatriots are nevertheless some years ahead in establishing private provision. Latvia has had third-pillar funds in ...
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Features
Preparing for battles ahead
It may not be saying much, but custody has never been so exciting as it is in Germany at the moment. For one thing, the master KAG concept is putting global custodians on the map as nothing has before. And, of course, there is matter of State Street digesting the ...
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Features
Revised legislation aims to strengthen fund assets
In Austria, pensions have hit the headlines over the past year. The run-up to June’s passing of the pensions reform bill by the Austrian parliament was marked by national strikes and demonstrations as points of the bill were hotly opposed. In the end, concessions had to be made on key ...
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Features
Private pensions' two-pronged approach
After lagging behind its neighbours in private pensions and investment funds provisions, Lithuania has passed a comprehensive set of financial laws allowing for second-pillar pensions and clearing the way for third-pillar pensions and investment funds to operate on a level footing with life insurance. The significant legal changes took place ...
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Features
Austrian Spezialfonds face new challenges
Institutional investors in Austria have been enjoying the benefits of outsourcing asset management services for a number of years. The key instrument to implement a sound outsourcing strategy is the Spezialfonds (see box). Spezialfonds are launched by management companies KAGs according to the client-specific needs of a single institutional investor ...
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Features
Time to shut the back office
This article considers issues involved in outsourcing each of the main areas of a pension scheme, and in particular back office outsourcing. It is based on an operation I successfully carried out at the £3bn (e4.3bn) TRW/Lucas fund in the UK. This was probably the first case of an in-house ...
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Features
Focus has been on second pillar pensions
The Brussels-based Belgian Pension Fund Association (BPFA) has found itself involved in two main areas in the past year or so: the implementation of the new law on second-pillar pensions and the investments results of Belgian funds during 2002. In addition, the BPFA has undergone some internal restructuring as a ...
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Features
Bridging the gulf
Set to kick off this year on 20 October in Singapore, the occasion of SWIFT’s annual Sibos conference and exhibit is always an apposite moment to reflect upon the Belgium-based cooperative’s progress over the preceding year. This year, however, SWIFT ceo Lenny Schrank and his fellow executives could be forgiven ...
